1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to people monitoring devices and more particularly pertains to a child finder which utilizes a transmitter and receiver arrangement.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of electronic child monitors and locators is well known in the prior art. This is evidenced by the granting of a number of patents relating to various functional and structural aspects of such monitoring devices. These electronic monitoring devices typically utilize a transmitter mounted to the body of a person to be monitored, and a remotely located receiver which continually receives a signal from the aforementioned transmitter. A good example of such a locator system is to be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,794 which issued to Lawrence on Jun. 4, 1991. In this patent, there is disclosed a radio transmitter in a miniaturized configuration which is designed to be concealed on a person to be located, such as a lost child. An initiating signal is automatically transmitted by a repeater station when desired so as to activate the transmitter and allow the child to be located.
Another typical example of a personal locator is to be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,806,936 which issued to Koster on Apr. 23, 1974. The device illustrated and discussed in this patent comprises a tone modulated transmitter designed to transmit emergency distress signals, and these signals can be received by a receiver so as to determine the direction from which the emergency signals are being transmitted. The locator is small enough to be carried in a pocket or connected to the belt of a user.
An even further example of a personal locator transmitter is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,040 which issued to Weaver et al. on May 7, 1991. The personal locator transmitter discussed in this patent is adapted to be worn on the wrist of a user, and it has the size and appearance of a conventional wrist watch. The watch includes both a manually operable alarm activated by pressing a button and an automatic alarm actuated by an attempt to remove the unit from the wrist of the wearer.
While each of these prior art patents disclose devices which will fulfill their respective particular objects and requirements and which are most likely quite functional for their intended purposes, it will be noted that none of these patents disclose a concealed transmitter arrangement which is automatically electrically activated when worn on the body of a user. To the contrary, the prior art typically illustrates devices which are continually electrically activated through the use of batteries and which are not designed to be automatically activated only during periods of use. Accordingly, there is the danger that electrical energy will be depleted to the extent that the batteries will fail, especially if a user of such a locator forgets to turn off the electrical power supply to the transmitter during periods of non-use. As such, there apparently still exists the need for these types of concealed transmitters wherein the electrical supplies which power them are automatically turned on during periods of use and similarly automatically turned off during periods of non-use. In this respect, the present invention substantially fulfills this need.